Many years ago, my wife and I were in Arizona to attend a conference. We had several hours to kill until the first meeting that night, so I decided we’d make a quick trip to the Grand Canyon. Then, I calculated we had three hours to kill before we had to leave and decided we should hike the trail down the Canyon, at least for a bit.

Well, I miscalculated the extra time and effort it would take to walk back up, so the hike became a speed walk. With about a mile to go, I heard my wife from behind me yell, “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

In 2002, a couple of years after he won the Olympic gold medal in wrestling, Rulon Gardner went snowmobiling in Wyoming. “I told myself it would be a short trip,” he told the Associated Press. “We were going to go out about three hours and get home for dinner.”

But he got lost and ended up stranded for 17 hours. The temperature reached as low as 25 below zero, according to the AP.

A reader emailed to remind me there’s been a spate of carbon monoxide poisonings and several carbon monoxide deaths to go along with the cold weather in the Northeast United States. To me, that sort of news is always so troubling because even though carbon monoxide is a stealthy killer, the deaths are so preventable. All you need is a

I get a gnawing feeling in my stomach when I hear stories of people who died from an injury they might have survived if they’d just known a little more basic medicine. Or maybe they knew but just weren’t thinking right at the time.

And then there are the people who saved lives with well-applied tourniquets and other techniques, makeshift or otherwise, that often aren’t even taught in typical first-aid classes. If you’d like to know more about such techniques, I do have a video course.

Getting a devastating injury doesn’t always equal a death sentence, even if you’re in a disaster or homesteading or otherwise unable to get immediate professional help. If you know the right things to do, you may be able to survive—or save the life of a loved one.

Here are my best tips to deal with five life-threatening injuries when you can’t get to a doctor, until you can. (In addition to all these tips, have someone quickly call 911 if possible.) My suggestion is to put these to memory.

Every year we have a few measles outbreaks in the U.S., but they’re still pretty limited to a few hundred people. You’ve probably heard about the most recent one that started in Disneyland and may have led to over 100 people getting the measles so far in 2015.

The worry is the outbreaks are going to get more frequent and bigger, and that’s not just because of people coming to the U.S. from countries where fewer children are vaccinated, as some have speculated. The percentage of children getting vaccinated in the U.S. is down to 91 percent. Compare that to 89 percent in Mexico, for example, and you can see there’s not a lot of difference.

Two weeks ago, I asked what you want to learn more about this year. The most popular answer was “advanced” techniques.

Last week, I covered some really advanced questions about smoke inhalation—even ones experts have trouble answering. You responded by making that article the most popular post with subscribers in almost three months. Thanks. I’ll keep going in this direction.

I have one more important set of questions for you, and then we’ll get back to survival medicine.

This year, I want to create the products you need—things that fill gaps and help you prepare in practical ways. So I’ve created a brief follow-up survey about that.

If you’d like to have your voice heard (whether or not you took the first survey), please click here. (There are only five questions.) I’m really listening, and I hope we can make this the best year yet for your medical prepping.

My resolution for 2015 is for The Survival Doctor to focus even more on your needs. I want to help you prepare easier and quicker—in the exact ways you want to.

To that end, would you tell me how I can best help you by answeringthis five-question survey? It’ll only take about five minutes.

I want to know how you like to learn new things and what you most want to learn about. I’ve been soaking up medical information for over 40 years, so there’s a lot I could share. Where do you want me to focus?

After you take the survey, feel free to expound on your answers in the comments section below. I’ll share the survey results next week.